Suja Thomas

Suja Thomas is the Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, where she has been a faculty member since 2008. Previously, she served as a Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and has held visiting professorships at the University of Chicago Law School and Vanderbilt University Law School. Her scholarly work has been featured in prominent publications including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Professor Thomas earned her JD from New York University School of Law, where she served as an articles editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review and received multiple awards including the Leonard M. Henkin Prize for her note on equal rights under the 14th Amendment, the Mendes Hershman Prize for excellence in writing in property law, and the William Miller Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship in municipal law. She completed her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, earning a BA in mathematics.

Thomas's research focuses on the right to a jury trial, discrimination law, civil procedure, and theories of constitutional interpretation. She has written extensively on how the legal system undermines discrimination claims and the constitutional role of juries. Her work demonstrates how procedural mechanisms create barriers for employees alleging workplace discrimination and how the jury trial right has been eroded through judicial decisions.

Her publications reveal a consistent focus on constitutional interpretation, particularly regarding the Seventh Amendment right to civil jury trials and employment discrimination law. Through both scholarly articles and books, she has documented how courts have created a parallel legal system for employment discrimination cases that systematically favors employers over employees.

Among her significant honors, Thomas won CAAM's Ready, Set, Pitch contest with $10,000 funding from the MacArthur Foundation for her documentary project on the justice system. Her book 'Unequal: How America's Courts Undermine Discrimination Law' won the Pound Civil Justice Institute Civil Justice Scholarship Award and was positively reviewed by federal judges. The Wall Street Journal ran an article based on her co-authored work 'Employer Costs and Conflicts Under the Affordable Care Act.'

Professor Thomas is currently working on a documentary film about the justice system, funded in part by the Ford Foundation's JustFilms program. She was a 2023 fellow with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) and a 2020 fellow with Kartemquin Films. Her documentary work extends her scholarly mission to expose significant problems with the justice system that insiders accept daily. She has presented her documentary at the National Employment Lawyers Association meetings and co-authored amicus briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.